Wednesday, April 14, 2010

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With refinancing in the commercial real estate (CRE) sector still hard to
come by and delinquencies continuing to rise, special servicers of
commercial mortgages are dealing with large influxes of new troubled loans.

Primary and master servicers ranked by Standard
& Poor's have reported a continuous rise
in delinquent CRE loans since the second half of 2007, with delinquencies
hitting new all-time highs at the end of 2009, the ratings agency said in a
recent report
.

Michael Merriam, Standard & Poor's servicer analyst, explained that between
June and December of last year, total delinquencies within primary servicing
portfolios increased to 4.59 percent from 2.90 percent based on loan count.
Looking at outstanding principal balances, the delinquency rate increased to
5.50 percent from 3.28 percent.

Although loan transfers to special servicers actually eased somewhat
compared with the first half - the number of new transfers fell 4 percent,
while the dollar volume dropped a more significant 19.5 percent - Standard &
Poor's believes the large-balance retail loans that entered special
servicing earlier in 2009 as a result of General Growth Properties' April
2009 bankruptcy filing may have skewed this comparison.

The ratings agency also noted that upcoming loan maturities and other
imminent or nonmonetary defaults, rather than actual missed payments, also
continued to

account for nearly 60 percent of all transfer activity by loan count in the
second half of 2009.

In total, special servicers' loan portfolios grew 26 percent to 5,676 loans
at year-end 2009 compared with midyear, S&P said. Their REO portfolios also
grew 26 percent to 946 properties. In comparison, these same special
servicers had $71.1 billion of unresolved assets (4,504 loans and 750 REOs)
as of June 30, 2009, and $34.2 billion of unresolved assets (3,966 loans and
576 REOs) as of December 31, 2008.

Looking at recent asset dispositions, Standard & Poor's has observed a
steady decline in resolutions that ended more favorably - through full
payoffs or loan restructuring - and a growing percentage of discounted
payoffs (DPOs) and foreclosures since mid-2008. The overall average time to
complete loan resolutions is also increasing, the ratings agency said.

Standard & Poor's says the recent trends it's observed among special
servicers and their primary and master servicing counterparts reinforce the
idea that these companies will continue to face hurdles on many fronts in
the months ahead.

"We believe that these special servicers generally should still be able to
handle their workloads given variations in the complexity and distress of
the loans," Merriam said. "However, the assets-to-asset manager ratio will
remain an important factor."

The ratings agency says adequate staffing remains critical, especially for
high-volume servicers. Standard & Poor's calculated a composite ratio of 11
assets per asset manager at year-end. However, the ratio for the 10
largest-volume special servicers was approximately 16 assets per asset
manager.

A separate study by the CRE research firm Delta Associates
says that the aggregate value of
distressed commercial real estate in the United States has now reached
$187.4 billion. This figure includes properties in default, foreclosure, and
bank-owned REO, and represents a 10 percent increase over January 2009.


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